The Significance of Theory

by Terry Eagleton, Michael Payne

Terry Eagleton's work has had a powerful influence in debates about the politics of literature and culture. This book reflects the breadth of his interests. It offers a view of his career to date, raising a number of central issues in literature, culture and politics.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Philosophy, Theory

112 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1990

About the author

Widely regarded as England's most influential living literary critic & theorist, Dr. Terry Eagleton currently serves as Distinguished Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster and as Visiting Professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He was Thomas Warton Prof. of English Literature at the University of Oxford ('92-01) & John Edward Taylor Professor of English Literature at the University of Manchester 'til '08. He returned to the University of Notre Dame in the Autumn '09 semester as Distinguished Visitor in the English Department.

He's written over 40 books, including Literary Theory: An Introduction ('83); The Ideology of the Aesthetic ('90) & The Illusions of Postmodernism ('96).
He delivered Yale's '08 Terry Lectures and gave a Gifford Lecture in 3/10, titled The God Debate.

Reviews

[Burcu]

The introduction on Eagleton's theory is insightful, his own piece on the "Significance of Theory" is a very good discussion on the importance of theory for the Humanities. The piece on Adorno is a bit difficult, but it's probably mainly due to the difficult philosophy of Adorno himself. The interview is also a good addition. All in all the Bucknell Lectures series is a good attempt for what it is.

[Z666 · Rating 4 out of 5]

May mahalagang diskusyon hinggil sa kahalagahan at kahulugan ng teorya at kritisismo, hindi lang basta gawaing pang-akademiko, kundi isang aparato para subukang tugunan ang mahahalagang tawag at sigalot sa lipunan. Mapanganib at destruktibo, kung gayon, ang ikulong ang teorya sa paaralan, itaas at gawing maladiyos na tinatangi ng maraming tao.

Isa pang nais kong susugan ang kahalagahan ng muling pagbasa (rereading) at reeksaminasyon ng kasaysayan. Basagin ang nakasanayang nosyon ng awtonomiya ng teksto bilang piraso o artepak na mag-isang nakatatayo sa kasaysayan, labas sa buhay at katotohanan. May mahahalagang usapin hinggil sa pagiging “intellectually and politically sterile” ng New Criticism at Structuralism, at pagkakabit-kabit ng lipunan at kasaysayan sa anyo ng panitikan.

Iwan ko na lang itong sipi na magandang pang-udyok para basahin si Eagleton:

“Dialectical thought digs the object loose from its illusory self-identity, but thereby risks liquidating it within some ghastly concentration camp of the Absolute Idea; and Adorno’s provisional response to this problem is a set of guerilla raids on the inarticulable, a style of philosophizing which frames the object conceptually but manages by some cerebral acrobatics to glance sideways at what gives such generalized identity the slip.”

[Theodoros Vassiliadis · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 years ago, I read "in Bluebeard's castle" by George Steiner, where he ponders on how can it be that nazi Germans were commuting the utmost hideous crimes during daytime , while listening to Beethoven's sonatas at the same evening.
Of course it's not too hard to reckon that this is not an oddity.
When one assumes culture and its manifestation called art as a sensuous element ,afar from any serious recollection on this , then she's not distant to the pro- linguistic savages .
Same contemplation occurs in this text by TE , concerning theory created in tandem by ideology ; meaning the spatiotemporal vestiges when thinking of human condition.
References are made on Adorno, Bakthin, Benjamin ,and their approach to art attempting to break the language barrier and to get closer to the death wish , which is the offspring of holon.
Precise and thankfully tormenting analysis arises in each page that is trying to subvert the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois travesty of history and the game of appearances and pretext that fulfils this group.
Eagleton uses the tongue of despair that Adorno and so many before him had the ability to present and brings in plain sight the hypocrisies of the safe class which he discourse in order to undermine effectively

[Jude Nonesuch · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was meant to do a review of this but I finished it too long ago to remember. Perhaps I will have to read it again.